Comparision between AntiX and MX Linux

[LinuxSpring1]

but they don't take Debian and add a DE .. they (MX and antiX devs) do it from scratch every new major Debian release ( like Bullseye, Bookworm ... )

Thanks @Charlie Brown that helps. One of the reason for basing a distro from a well established Distro (like Debian, Arch, Red Hat, Slackware, etc) is so that majority of the plumbing is not required to be done by the devs. Do you have any idea on what is taken from Debian as it is and what is modified? Is that documented somewhere?

[Charlie Brown]

... any idea on what is taken from Debian as it is and what is modified?..

The default kernel is directly from Debian (also being updated directly from their repos) (... used to be MX / antiX's own kernel but afaik to make it upgradeable and for 1-2 other reasons they changed to this way)... Also (most) packages (software we all use in daily life) are directly from Debian repos, hence we have Debian repos existing ootb in our sources.list.d .

Other than that they (have to) modify or add some others (like scripts) to make it SysV-compatible, or to make compatible for many MX Tools and Live System ... These are just what I know, but of course devs can answer better :)

there isn't really a list of changes, mostly because we don't start with a base debian system when we build MX and antiX. and what is a basic debian system anyway?

we build them up from scratch using the debian repos.

a few highlights:

use of the antiX live-usb system instead of debians
sysVinit by default (mx uses systemd-shim, antiX uses elogind/eudev)
there are a few changes to default grub configurations (/etc/default/grub)
use of our own updater (apt-notifier/mx-updater) which brings in some of those auto-update configs
tweaks to /etc/sysctl.d
modified sysVinit init scripts in some cases (lightdm, sddm, virtualbox, udev)
we do not install "recommends" as dependencies by default (apt configuration under /etc/apt)

@asqwerth mostly the video series is still valid. there are antiX packages that are different that MX's versions these days due to the way we handle systemd/nosystemd. but the general principles are the same.

we build from scratch using debian and mx repo packages, so we don't start with an iso. I know some distros do that, but the antiX build system is pretty good, especially for hand-crafting stuff.
if you start from an iso, SwampRabbit's list is pretty good.

the main thing to watch is to remove settings packages, or else you risk us overwriting custom configs with package updates.

[Artim]

@dolphin_oracle wrote:

sysVinit by default (mx uses systemd-shim, antiX uses elogind/eudev)

Far be it from some upstart kid to correct an honored and accomplished veteran techno-wizard! But I think antiX used to use elogind/eudev but no longer does. The most compelling difference between MX and antiX - for me at least - is that antiX is completely free of systemd and elogind.

[LinuxSpring1]

Will that continue to be the case, i.e. antiX is completely free of systemd and eloginid?

[dolphin_oracle]

Will that continue to be the case, i.e. antiX is completely free of systemd and eloginid?

that is one of their project goals.

[DukeComposed]

Will that continue to be the case, i.e. antiX is completely free of systemd and eloginid?

There's an FAQ that could've answered a lot of these questions.